Summer School 2018: Innovation Game

EIT Health invites you to face real health challenges with serious game design – beyond pure entertainment. Together we can promote changes and improvement in health care, education and behavior.

The summer course Innovation Game helps you create solutions that promote change in health care and encourage healthy lifestyles. You will learn about innovative processes and innovative thinking as a tool to solve problems in interdisciplinary teams. Game design will be used as an educational tool for learning.

This three-week course will discuss innovative processes as a tool to improve health care services and enhance self-management of health. The course will introduce methods and terminology of innovation and entrepreneurship and how innovative thinking can be applied to understand a problem, generate an idea, outline a goal and find a creative solution of value for the end-user.

As a participant you will examine problems defined by society, and together with representatives of health care, industry and academy create innovative solutions for a healthy lifestyle. Focus is on application of serious games to promote change in health care, self management, learning and behavior, for example through training, competition and education.

The course aims to provide knowledge of how innovative processes in interdisciplinary teams can be used to solve health challenges. It has a multidisciplinary focus with participants from different disciplines working together. The prerequisites to run projects and solve problems in multidisciplinary teams (understanding group dynamics, leadership and decision-making, etc.) will be discussed and practiced in teams on need-based challenges provided by e.g. the health care sector. Game design will also be used to enhance the four pillars of learning – critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity. The psychology behind changes in behaviour and attitudes will also be discussed.

The course starts with assignments that will require one week of reading course literature, studying online material and playing games before you head to Gotland for two weeks. The course combines teaching with practical teamwork, and several of the stakeholders involved in formulating challenges for the students have chosen to present them in person.

Application

The course will run 6-17 August at Campus Gotland, Sweden. Anyone with a Bachelor’s degree and good English language skills are welcome to apply for the course. The course includes living arrangements in Visby.

This course is co-funded by EIT Health and part of Uppsala University's engagement in EIT Health with the goal to promote entrepreneurship and innovations in healthy living and active ageing, with the aim to improve quality of life and healthcare across Europe.